Washing with plain water better than hand sanitizer.

I have often recommend that people with hand eczema, such as pompholox eczema, should avoid washing their hands with strong soaps and hand sanitizers. The chemicals in these products can irritate eczema prone skin, as well as dry out our natural oils, causing an inflammatory reaction. For those that worry about ‘germs’ a new study just came out showing that washing hands under just plain water for 30 seconds was good enough to inactivate viruses such as influenza A.

This was especially true for the common hand-sanitizers that you can find in every public building, from hospital elevator to library to the outdoor potties found at campsites. Not only do the chemicals within them aggravate eczema prone skin, but they have actually been shown to not work very well. It has something to do with mucus, such that a virus, like Influenza A, remains protected when it is surrounded by mucus. The ethanol within hand sanitizers cannot penetrate through this mucus as well as water and so the germs remain in an active state. Obviously giving the user a false sense of protection.

“The physical properties of mucus protect the virus from inactivation,” lead researcher Ryohei Hirose, PhD, MD, a physician and molecular gastroenterologist at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in Japan, said in a news release. “Until the mucus has completely dried, infectious IAV can remain on the hands and fingers, even after appropriate antiseptic hand rubbing.” – Medscape, September 23, 2019

The only sure way to de-activate the virus was to wash for 30 seconds under soapy water, or just with plain water. Now, if you have eczema on your hands, and plain water is good enough to eradicate even something as contagious as the Flu, then please stick to plain water! Nurturing your hands will go a long way in reducing inflammatory flare ups, which will then help the skin to heal itself and come back to normal.

In my clinical practice, hand eczema is most commonly seen in 2 groups of people – nurses and new moms. Both may wash their hands with stronger detergents, as well as use hand sanitizers, a lot. This shows that the external treatment of our hands is often one of the main causes for eczema in those places, rather than it being related to anything we eat.

Have hand eczema? Then please protect your skin. Use plain water to wash and try to avoid anything that may irritate or dry out your skin. Research confirms you may well be better protected from the ‘bad germs’ using these simple measures anyways.